dan y, what denatured alcohol are you using, if I remember right, you use sunnside or one of the high ethanol ones, right? Which would alter the results by roughly 15% over slx I believe re efficiency, at least in theory, still excellent efficiency/speed though.

I was testing some of the things dan d brought up here and realized all my tests were using a large fan above the stove to blow out the toxic gases through an open window, which creates a light breeze over the screen, I'm sure all screens with air holes all around the base will have the same exact problem, just to test an idea I popped a 1.5" or so high short screen in front of the air holes windward side, about 1" out from main screen (my air holes are low, so that would be about 1" above top of air slots, the results were spectacular, the degradation I'd seen due to the small breeze coming through the bottom holes vanished instantly, even with the fan turned up higher than normal.

For real world outside in the elements including wind burns this might be of interest as a trick to get around having holes facing the wind, I wasn't sure if it would work, but it does. Obviously the lower the air holes on the screen the better.

dan d, also, I noticed you are testing with 40F water, what I found studying the efficiency of alcohols fuel/stove / water boils was that if you roughly get 14ml to boil 70F water, then you can simply consider 1ml per 10F as what is required if you go below 70F, that makes it easy to translate your cold water numbers to 70F numbers, and for you to translate 70F numbers to your numbers. The energy required to bring water up 10F is a constant no matter what the water starting temp is. that is.

Odd Man Out Heptane essentially is gasoline/white gas. I didn't think that was advisable in an alcohol stove. Using white gas would eliminate a lot of the advantages of alcohol for me.

Also, I don't see the need for a bomb calorimeter. It seems that you are most interested in two parameters - the power and efficiency of the system. Power is how fast it heats the water and efficiency is how much heat is delivered to the water from a given amount of fuel. Often these two are at odds - powerful stoves tend to be inefficient and efficient ones have low power. Which is best for you depends on your own preferences.

The way that I have been able to measure both of these parameters in a single easy test is to use an amount of water and fuel so the water DOES NOT come to a full boil when the stove burns out (say 15 mL fuel and 750 mL of water). You will need to measure accurately and precisely to get good results. Measure the starting temperature of your water, light the stove, and measure the temperature of the water every 1/2 minute (I have a digital probe thermometer and a pot lid with a small hole so I can easily monitor the temperature during the test). Keep measuring until the flame goes out and the temperature starts to drop. Plot the time in minutes (x-axis) vs temp in deg C (y-axis). The points in the middle of the graph should be very linear. Do a linear regression of these points to get a slope for the line. Also subtract the minimum temperature from the maximum temperature to get a change of temperature (delta T). All these calculations can be easily programed into a spreadsheet.

The power of your system (in Watts) is the slope of the line (degC/min) times the volume of water (in mL) divided by 14.3414.34 is a combination of conversion factors including 1 min per 60 sec, the specific heat of water (1 cal/g-deg C), the density of water (1 g/mL), and 4.184 J/cal. Some of these are approximations, but they are close enough for home use.

The efficiency of your stove (in Joules/mL of fuel) is delta T (in deg C) times the volume of water (in mL) times 4.184 J/cal divided by the volume of fuel used (in mL).

With these numbers, you could easily estimate other commonly used stove performance standards such as time to boil 2 cups of water (which will be based on the power of the stove) and the Volume of water that can be boiled using 1/2 oz of fuel, or amount of fuel needed to boil 2 cups of water (which are based on the efficiency of the stove).

I use specialized tools that have been adapted to create the ridges. My father was a "tool and die" maker and taught me many things. Even with specialized tools, the ridges are difficult to apply. It's a "slow" process. I have many many Foster cans with defects because of trying to go too fast. I need to have a scratch&dent sale :-)))

You should be receiving your SS pot soon. Let me know when it arrives. I'm waiting on some 4 gram esbits to try out with a small container inside the cone and using the SS pot. One full size cube was way too much for 2 cups. That test was performed outside with a stiff breeze.

I initially saw the pots in a thread here at BPL. The author was located in California. He got them locally at an Asian food store. I did a search locally and found some at an Asian store. I liked them so much I had them order me 50 more so I could modify them and offer them to BPL members only. The pot only weighs 2oz and the lid is heavy at 1oz. :-) The order from the Asian food store is due in any day now. I'm also waiting on some small 4 gram esbit tabs to test under the pot and cone, they should arrive today. If I can get 2 of the tabs to boil 2 cups using a small feather weight aluminum tin then I'll include one of the tins with the pot.

Dan, if the ones you get are the same as the KV ones, the spot welds are not very solid. I almost was going to ask the KV people if they could contact the distributor to see if the company making them would consider a batch without handles or spot welds, for a small premium. Check the insides of the pot at the spot welds to see how they look.

The 600ml lid weighs about 21 grams.

Pots are less efficient than ti in my tests, noticeably so. But the lids rock, they are really good, better than any ti lid I've ever seen, and just as light.

Harald, that would be great if you could have them get a pallet full with out handles. Yes, I agree about the welds. I have to leave a small tab on the lower portion of the pot that is a remnant of the pot handle that I remove. If I remove the tab it's likely to leave a pinhole in the metal that will leak. The upper one I take off because that is where I weld the bracket. My initial 3 tests were very positive with the stainless. Stainless is suppose to be better at heat conduction right?

Dan,That's a nice ridge on the ti pot. That's what I had envisioned for my Lite Trail no-handled mug to correspond with a custom ti Caldera Cone. For the most part I dislike handled on my pots, with the exception of a bail handle on larger ones. I have dreams about a larger selection of ti pots w/o handles. My dream is to one day own a BPL Firelite 1100. I fear it will never happen. :( and no one will ever make one like it.Sad,James

That was the idea, but the reality didn't correspond to the idea. If I had to put numbers on it, I'd guess that the stainless pot is about 10-15% less efficient.

Where I'd get up to or over a 60 second rolling boil on 2 cups with ti pot, I'd get barely a boil with the ss, if I got a boil at all. I think my last screen with more airholes did get a weak boil out of the ss pot if I remember right, or a boil then out right away.

I had also assumed that ss being a being better conductor would mean more efficient, but this was not at all the result in my testing. In fact, ti was by far the best, this thin ss second best, and an old heavier but wider boyscout aluminum pot by far the worst. This testing actually finally convinced me that ti is not just a sort of overpriced ul thing, but actually has utility and superior characteristics for this task.

This assumption actually made me go down a wrong path re testing for quite a while, I simply could not figure out what had suddenly made my test setup less efficient when nothing had changed other than the allegedly more efficient ss pot, it took a fair number of tests before I realized that the ss was the problem, because magically the ti pot always got better boils. I was also fortunate that the ss and the ti pot are roughly the same diameter so I could discount pot width as a factor.

I speculated a bit as to why this would be the case, and what I guess is that the heat spreads all over the ss pot whereas the heat goes pretty much right from flame to ti pot to water with ti. Since the heat closest to the flame source is strongest and has least area to dissipate, the ti wins, whereas with ss and aluminum, the heat spreads out all over the pot, but also from there to the air, not the water. That's my guess, but I'm not attached to it, but it does make a crude sort of sense assuming my logic isn't based on a false premise. I have an alternate theory that wonders if the ss pot radiates out / back more heat to the burn chamber, making it hotter, making the alcohol boil off faster than it burns. Both theories can work together too.

By the way, I was going to suggest that welding the holes after taking off the spot welded part would yield a very good pot, albeit marked by the weld, but since most people don't have welders, I didn't mention it, but I would think about doing that if I were you, all my pots have distinct rust right inside at the point of the spot weld, and I don't believe those could be relied on over time, unless it's not rust and it's just some weird production glitch. But getting a leak in the bottom holes would not be fun on a longer trip, that's why I won't use mine on long trips.

I purchased the from Jhaura Wachsman at litetrail.com. They're the older version of his solid fuel cook kit. His new ones have...handles:( As far as I know, I have two, Chad from Sticks blog has one and Jhaura has one. There might be more floating around but I don't know where to get them. It's a Toaks brand pot if that helps at all. Maybe an email to Jhaura would help?Thanks, James

James I registerd an account with Toaks website and will correspond with them to see if they can get more of the no handle pots like yours. I may have to order in quantity to get some brought in, which I will do. I'll also contact BPL to see if they can direct me to a wholesale source for Ti pots.

For now, send me yours and I'll put a ridgeline on it so it sits 2 inches off the ground and make a paper cone to simulate rolling it and storing it inside the pot. Send the lid also. There are many users of the StarLyte stoves that place their pots directly on the SS pot support and use the corrugated windscreen and get great results. I now make the StarLyte stoves with the Modified burner. Dan Durston can give you some insight on making a DIY cone. TD should be able to make a cone similar to the one they made for me to fit the SS pot.

I'm just about to head to the mountains for the weekend, no time to pack and ship. I'll get it sent out on Monday. I'm excited to see the results and the potential for this. The perfect ti SUL setup?I have just about every version of your starlyte, with supports, w/o, modified and not. They all have they're special place in one cook kit or another. But, this idea is for esbit specifically but I know itll work with your starlytes. I wonder how well we could do with 4g esbits?-James

James, I wanted to point out something that Conrad said about the placement of the silicone band on his Heineken pot. He said it’s below the 2 cup mark that is shown above the star. The cone is located approximately at the center of the Heineken pot. Half the pot is exposed to the air.

Conrad said he gets his best efficiency with the StarLyte at that location. From the bottom of the band to the bottom of the pot is approx. 2.750 and it’s the same to the top of the pot.

Conrad said:After much experimenting, I found that the band set at the height in the picture resulted in the best boil times using only .5oz of alky. I was getting rolling boils at 9.5mins, and effective burnouts around 12.5 mins (the flame would trickle on until past 14 mins, but it wasn't hot enough to do anything). The key is to leave the lid on and not check it unti you hear it boiling. Premature checking cut down my efficiency a lot and I would only getting bubbling boils before burnout.

An old saying: A watched pot will never boil.

Conrad pointed this out to us in his statement: The key is to leave the lid on and not check it unti you hear it boiling. Premature checking cut down my efficiency a lot and I would only getting bubbling boils before burnout.

When I had TD make a custom cone for my SS pot the ridgeline was placed below the center of the pot. More than half the pot is exposed and yet my first 3 tests using 1/2 ounce denatured alcohol boil 2 cups. I feel positive that we'll be able to make your Ti pot work in the same way.

I'll do some testing with your Ti pot and the 4 gram esbits. I burned a box full on Sunday watching water boil :-) I'll use my new gram burning stove and see if I can squeeze the pot into my Ti Cone.

Awesome! I love the optimism. With the size difference between the 4g and 14g esbits would there be a benefit from a 4g sized esbit tray? And what have you found worked well for your burns on Sunday? Stacked, side-by-side, etc. thanks for the work your doing.-james

James, today's testing shows it's best to lay the 4 gram tabs side by side. That's in the round tin design that I'm playing with. I reduced the amount of holes in the stove and it is now burning to pefection output....no soot or deposit. 2.225 tablets boils 2 cups with my SS 3 cup pot on top of the stoves pot supports in a calm environment. Ran out of time, didn't try it inside the cone.

I have a hand tool that I can easily pre score the 4 gramers so I can break them into quarters when needed. When I do a video, I'll show that tool.